


Moving Toward Something

by hophophop



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Bees, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, it's a sad sad story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:39:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6492352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hophophop/pseuds/hophophop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>Isn't it obvious? </em>
</p><p>Inspired by <a href="http://nairobiwonders.tumblr.com/post/131465273229/he-passed-away-quietly-in-his-sleep-she-woke-to">nairobiwonder's tumblr ficlet</a> about Sherlock dying in his sleep after 35 years with Watson and the <a href="http://nairobiwonders.tumblr.com/post/131498220854/thank-you-for-the-comments-on-the-quick-fic-last">follow-up meta comment</a> about Watson's depth of feeling for him. </p><p>Nobody dies in this fic, but death is all around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Moving Toward Something

Technically Kitty Winter was still listed as a person of interest in an unsolved case, but Gregson was long retired, Gruner hadn't lived to see his third year in prison, and no one else was left to remember or care about the outstanding warrant. Still, as a precaution, the 58-year old woman who stepped toward Joan on the Brownstone roof had travelled under the name she'd been given at birth, just in case. Despite the years and the pale green pixie haircut, her eyes were the same, and Joan didn't catch her own reflex to look back over her shoulder to grin at Sherlock until it was too late.

Kitty released a sorrowful, "Oh, Watson" when Joan turned back, too slow to shutter the desolation that was the shadow to every thought now. It startled her, to be seen as she actually was, once more. Since her mother died, only Sherlock had that skill, honed over decades of careful observation. Or perhaps it was she who'd lost the ability or instinct to camouflage, now that there was no one left to truly see her. And then the shadow offered to swallow her whole, and she wanted that closure so badly that Kitty had to touch her sleeve to get her attention again.

Kitty's hand rested next to the rolled-up cuff, and she rubbed the rough cloth a moment with a sad smile. Joan pulled herself upright, letting the weight of Sherlock's pea coat draw her shoulders down. She'd been wearing it since the funeral, four days now, and she'd forgotten what she looked like in it. A slightly stooped elderly Asian woman, older than she appeared with only a few silver streaks in her long dark hair, but in this past week grown gaunt and worn, as if the last fifteen years of aging had caught up with her all at once.

A shell of the detective she once was, a bitter thought muttered, the frail remnant of the partnership that had dissolved without her consent a second time. She winced. Sherlock's coat grounded her even as its too-large dimensions made her appear as someone adrift, lost. She didn't really care; the heavy stiff wool was good armor. A hedge against mortality, someone might say, and so what if it was, just not in the way he meant. She forced herself back into the unwelcome present.

"Watson?" Kitty repeated.

"No one calls me that now," Joan started, and her throat closed up.

"Would you rather I didn't?" Kitty's voice was low and her expression compassionate, but in her mind Joan heard belligerent sarcasm affected by a defiant defensive young woman. She released a small smile at the memory and shook her head, reaching over to pat Kitty's hand before letting her arm drop away.

"It's fine." It's his legacy, she thought. For both of us.

"You've always been 'Watson' to me." Kitty tilted her head slightly. "I tried to call you Joan after we finally met, do you remember?" Joan shrugged with a little shake of her head. "Well, it didn't stick. I was so frustrated in those early days. I was excited to be in New York but apprehensive about you. 'Watson' was _his_ partner, his friend, the detective I'd been forever compared to and found wanting. It took a little while for me to get past that." She tried a rueful smile. "As you may recall." She waited a beat for a reaction Joan couldn't muster, and another to accept her non-response. "Anyway, by then it was too late to call you something else: to me, you're Watson. I really don't think of it as his name for you, though of course…"

"Did he teach you about the bees?" Joan asked abruptly, and turned back to the five towers of hives, which were interspersed with planter boxes of flowers. Sherlock had expanded the apiary in his retirement this last decade, and days pouring over crime scene photos gave way to theories and experiments on mites and pesticides and colony collapse prevention.

"No." In Kitty's experience, Sherlock had retreated to the roof for a break from instruction; Kitty hadn't exactly felt unwelcome there, but it wasn't something he'd seemed particularly interested in sharing, unlike almost everything else he knew. Maybe if she'd stayed longer. "Did he teach you?" she asked, trying to recapture Watson's attention.

Joan seemed to shrink further into the coat, and Kitty wasn't sure if the slight shake of her head was intentional or the start of a tremor. "He made arrangements for them, for..all of it, in case… But there was something about a ritual when the beekeeper died… He told me about it years ago, and I can't remember the details." She lifted her arm in a weak gesture toward the closest hive and let it drop again slowly. "So I've been sitting out here hoping it will come back to me." There were two weathered chairs placed at the focal point of the hives, which were arranged in a rough half-circle. Next to each chair was a wooden crate set as a side table, some sort of metal contraption and gloves put away inside one, and a thermos on top of the other. A throw blanket trailed off an armrest onto the roof itself.

"You've been staying up here?" Joan stiffened, and Kitty hastened to continue, "No, I mean I would too. It's…I remember him up here, but it's not…. The house is so full of memories. Up here, it's like I can still feel him but without the pressure of it all bearing down on me." They both frowned. "Sorry, that's me. I can't imagine… Look, I don't mean to tell you what you're feeling…" She shivered in the sudden chill of the late afternoon.

"It has been easier up here," Joan said carefully, her gaze shifting away again. It was like watching someone fade in and out of focus, Kitty thought. Or a faint radio station dissolving into white noise static.

"I don’t know, would it help to have company inside? If I made a fire in the library, could you come sit with me there for a bit? It's supposed to drop below freezing tonight. I haven't lived somewhere with a fireplace in years. We don't have to talk. Jet lag's going to catch up with me soon, and I'll probably nod off and leave you in peace." She was babbling, and rubbed her forehead nervously.

Joan shifted her shoulders inside the coat, pressed the knuckles of her right hand against her breast bone with a shaky inhale, and blinked a few times as if waking up. "Of course, you must be exhausted. You can have your old room. I'm not staying there any more."


End file.
